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Marvolo Gaunt
Marvolo Gaunt is Voldemort's grandfather. He is of the House of Gaunt which is descended from Salazar Slytherin. The family all believed in the supremacy of pure-blood wizards, and have long practised marrying only other pure-bloods including their own cousins. This resulted in an extremely in-bred family, apparently suffering from hereditary insanity as a result. Once rich and influential, the family was now reduced to poverty and lived in a ruined cottage in Little Hangleton. Role in the Stories In the 1920s Marvolo Gaunt lived with his son and daughter. His son was in the habit of using magic in front of villagers, which brought Morfin into conflict with the Ministry of Magic. Bob Ogden, Head of Department of Magical Law Enforcement, visited the Gaunts to summon Morfin to a hearing, but the Gaunts resisted, forcibly ejecting Ogden from their cottage. He returned, but arrested both Morfin and his father. Marvolo was sentenced to three months in Azkaban prison for assaulting the officers, but his son received a three year sentence. Merope had been badly treated by her father and brother, and took the opportunity of their absence to escape. She had fallen in love with the son of the local squire, Tom Riddle, and used magic to make him fall in love with her. They shortly after married, and she became pregnant. Albus Dumbledore speculated that she then chose to stop giving the love potion to Tom, hoping that he would stay with her. Unfortunately he did not, and she ended up homeless, pregnant and penniless on the streets of London. Her only possession of any value was a family locket which had once belonged to Salazar Slytherin. She sold this to Caractacus Burke for ten galleons, a tiny fraction of its true worth. Finally, she ended up at an orphanage, where she gave birth to a son on New Year's Eve 1926, shortly before she died. The boy was to be named Tom after his father, and Marvolo after his grandfather. Tom Sr. returned to his family, apparently unaware that he had a child. Marvolo returned to his home to discover it abandoned. He was enrage by his daughter's desertion and marriage to a Muggle. Either because of this, or simply because he was unable to care for himself, he died before his son was released from prison. When Tom Marvolo Riddle was a teenage student at Hogwarts he came to Little Hangleton to find his family. He met Morfin, who thought that this stranger reminded him of Merope's husband, but did not recognise him. He told Tom the story, infuriating Tom in the process. Tom went to the Riddle's home where he killed Tom senior and his parents, using the Avada Kedavra curse. He returned to Morfin and altered his memory, so that Morfin believed he himself had killed the Riddles. The Ministry of Magic investigated the crime, found Morfin who freely admitted to it, and sentenced him to life imprisonment in Azkaban. Voldemort took the family signet ring, bearing the Peverell crest, which he afterwards wore openly at Hogwarts. The Riddles had a caretaker, Frank Bryce. The muggle police initially arrested him, but could find no cause of death for the Riddles, so were forced to release him. Many years later, Voldemort returned to the Riddle House when he was attempting to restore his body. Bryce stumbled upon him after he saw lights in the empty house. For his long service to the family, he too was murdered by it's last member and true killer of the Riddle Family, Lord Voldemort. Dumbledore discovered this story by speaking to Morfin in prison, and determined that his memory had been tampered with. Unfortunately Morfin was by then extremely weak and died before he could be released. Voldemort used several objects to create Horcruxes, in his quest for eternal life. These are objects containing and safeguarding a portion of a person's soul. Two of these objects were the two Gaunt Family heirlooms: Gaunt's Ring and Salazar Slytherin's Locket. Category:Gaunt family Gaunt, Marvolo